In this week’s newsletter, Bitcoin-based nonfungible tokens (NFTs) flipped Ethereum in weekly sales, and an Ordinals trader recovered their Bitcoin after a mistaken transaction. Read about Coachella and OpenSea collaborating on three NFT collections, find out how The Sandbox executives feel about NFTs and the metaverse in an exclusive interview, and a rare CryptoPunk sold for $16 million.
Bitcoin Ordinals-based NFT collections surpassed Ethereum NFTs in weekly sales after a spike in volume led by the collection called NodeMonkes. The sales of Bitcoin NFTs recorded $169.5 million in volume, going up by 80% week-over-week. Ethereum, the top blockchain in all-time NFT sales, had $162 million in the same week.
Uncategorized Ordinals — NFTs that are not part of any collections — had the most sales, with $43 million in volume across 47,000 transactions. The NodeMonkes collection followed in second place, with $41 million in sales volume.
A Bitcoin Ordinals trader was refunded after mistakenly purchasing an NFT worth $13,000. On March 1, the trader shared their story on X to remind the community to double-check their transactions. However, the NFTs original owner saw the post on X and offered to repurchase the NFT.
Dan Anderson, the seller of the NFT, offered to buy back the asset with the original sale price. According to Anderson, they listed the NFT for 0.21 BTC (about $13,000 at the time) because it’s “dank” and not to “fish for a fat finger.”
Arts and music festival Coachella announced a collaboration with OpenSea to launch NFTs with utilities during the popular event. On March 5, the festival revealed that its 2024 festival will have three NFT collections. These NFTs will act as passes to exclusive experiences and merch.
The NFTs will be hosted on the Avalanche network. The collections will be released in three drops that combine Coachella’s intellectual property artwork with extra benefits like access to exclusive areas for holders.
The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget and CEO Arthur Madrid spoke with Cointelegraph’s Gareth Jenkinson at the NFT Paris event about renewed interest in the metaverse platform’s token and its partnerships with brands like Lacoste and Gucci.
Madrid said that while people enjoy saying that the metaverse is dead, this is not the case for them. The executive argued that having a metaverse with crypto, NFTs and avatars is still meaningful. Meanwhile, Borget explained that they focus on empowering creators to create new content experiences.
A rare alien-like Punk claimed the second-highest selling price for an Alien CryptoPunk NFT after getting a 4,500 Ether (ETH) bid on March 4. The $16 million bid was accepted, and the CryptoPunk #3100 asset was awarded to the anonymous bidder.
The NFT is valued because it was very rare, being one of the 10,000 in the highly sought-after CryptoPunks collection. In addition, there were only nine Alien CryptoPunks ever minted.